Voiceofreason01:Relatively Obscure: Voiceofreason01: On the one hand child abuse is a terrible thing but on the other censorship in any form is a very dangerous thing. I'm not sure how I feel about this.

We already censor child porn. We just suck at it.

and we have the first of many responses from people who did not read the article.

Voiceofreason01:On the one hand child abuse is a terrible thing but on the other censorship in any form is a very dangerous thing. I'm not sure how I feel about this.

Google is already complicit in removing allegedly infringing (but legal) content from search results just on the basis of DMCA claims, with no oversight or review to see if said content is actually fair use or not before removal.

R.A.Danny:We tend to bristle at the government censoring things. That isn't what is happening here.

It's not better when Google censors things. I'm fine with child porn being removed from the internet. What bothers me is that the technology that Google is creating and refining could easily be used to spy on anybody or censor anything.

Voiceofreason01:R.A.Danny: We tend to bristle at the government censoring things. That isn't what is happening here.

It's not better when Google censors things. I'm fine with child porn being removed from the internet. What bothers me is that the technology that Google is creating and refining could easily be used to spy on anybody or censor anything.

Finding one less titty on the internet is not an infringement on your rights.

R.A.Danny:Voiceofreason01: R.A.Danny: We tend to bristle at the government censoring things. That isn't what is happening here.

It's not better when Google censors things. I'm fine with child porn being removed from the internet. What bothers me is that the technology that Google is creating and refining could easily be used to spy on anybody or censor anything.

Finding one less titty on the internet is not an infringement on your rights.

What if President Santorum decides that you shouldn't be able to see any titties on the internet? Or let's say and unscrupulous administration or stupid congress don't like certain political speech? That's OK, just put in a phone call to Google. Or how about Google decides to back a certain political party or candidate, what's to stop them from making it difficult or impossible to find information on those people? Like I said I don't have a problem with child porn being censored or it's producers prosecuted. What does bother me is that this technology would be ridiculously easy to abuse.

Voiceofreason01:On the one hand child abuse is a terrible thing but on the other censorship in any form is a very dangerous thing. I'm not sure how I feel about this.

I assume they arent actually removing anything from the net so much as revising what one can access with their search engine. It may be censorship, but it's their right. They already remove stuff that presumably violates copyright.

/if it bothers you, use a censor free porn engine?//would have been ok not clicking a link about child porn...thanks for the heads up, subby

Voiceofreason01:R.A.Danny: We tend to bristle at the government censoring things. That isn't what is happening here.

It's not better when Google censors things. I'm fine with child porn being removed from the internet. What bothers me is that the technology that Google is creating and refining could easily be used to spy on anybody or censor anything.

Well, I read the article (unlike a lot of people it seems) and they are not arbitrarily finding child porn and nuking it. FTA:

Recently, Google has begun using "fingerprinting" of child sex-abuse images, Fuller said. It will help law enforcement, Web companies and advocates find and remove the images, as well as prosecute the people who posted them, Google says.

Voiceofreason01: R.A.Danny: Voiceofreason01: R.A.Danny: We tend to bristle at the government censoring things. That isn't what is happening here.

It's not better when Google censors things. I'm fine with child porn being removed from the internet. What bothers me is that the technology that Google is creating and refining could easily be used to spy on anybody or censor anything.

Finding one less titty on the internet is not an infringement on your rights.

What if President Santorum decides that you shouldn't be able to see any titties on the internet?

Ashcroft v. Free Speech Coalition and Roth v. United States say that he can't do that.

Or let's say and unscrupulous administration or stupid congress don't like certain political speech?

That whole 1st Amendment to the Constitution thing right there.

That's OK, just put in a phone call to Google. Or how about Google decides to back a certain political party or candidate, what's to stop them from making it difficult or impossible to find information on those people?

They're still a business that wants to make money. Doing this would destroy the company.

Like I said I don't have a problem with child porn being censored or it's producers prosecuted. What does bother me is that this technology would be ridiculously easy to abuse.

Even though it has nothing to do with the content of the article: has anyone noticed that even with SafeSearch off, Google is completely useless for porn anymore? I'm talking the regular kind that the completely pointless and misleading title that Subby gave this article refers to. Do the same search on Yahoo and you're like, "hey! There's the results Google used to give me!"

Kyosuke:I have yet to see in any conversation on this subject who exactly gets to define "child porn."

They mention fingerprinting, so I assume they're comparing against the Official Database of Known Kiddie Porn (tm) (I forget the real name). I also assume the tech improvements they're working on are still in the area of finding these 'known' images even if they're edited / cropped / whatever.

Kyosuke:I have yet to see in any conversation on this subject who exactly gets to define "child porn."

I guess it comes down to how their fingerprinting algorithm is trained, and even then....Jacobellis v. Ohio (1964)The most famous opinion from Jacobellis, however, was Justice Potter Stewart's concurrence, holding that the Constitution protected all obscenity except "hard-core pornography." Stewart wrote, "I shall not today attempt further to define the kinds of material I understand to be embraced within that shorthand description; and perhaps I could never succeed in intelligibly doing so. But I know it when I see it..."

Anonymous Bosch:Even though it has nothing to do with the content of the article: has anyone noticed that even with SafeSearch off, Google is completely useless for porn anymore? I'm talking the regular kind that the completely pointless and misleading title that Subby gave this article refers to. Do the same search on Yahoo and you're like, "hey! There's the results Google used to give me!"

Kyosuke:I have yet to see in any conversation on this subject who exactly gets to define "child porn."

Oh, that one is easy: The US Supreme Court. As most of the Internet is run through the United States, US law is what trumps everything. The US Congress passed a few laws regarding what is and isn't child porn; the US Supreme Court gutted them, and we're left with a very basic definition: It's pictures or videos of actual people under the age of 18 engaged in sex acts.

Anonymous Bosch:Even though it has nothing to do with the content of the article: has anyone noticed that even with SafeSearch off, Google is completely useless for porn anymore? I'm talking the regular kind that the completely pointless and misleading title that Subby gave this article refers to. Do the same search on Yahoo and you're like, "hey! There's the results Google used to give me!"

meanmutton:Kyosuke: I have yet to see in any conversation on this subject who exactly gets to define "child porn."

Oh, that one is easy: The US Supreme Court. As most of the Internet is run through the United States, US law is what trumps everything. The US Congress passed a few laws regarding what is and isn't child porn; the US Supreme Court gutted them, and we're left with a very basic definition: It's pictures or videos of actual people under the age of 18 engaged in sex acts.

Some details:Congress passed:http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Child_Pornography_Prevention_Act_of_199 6Which was then presented to the Supreme Court in:http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ashcroft_v._Free_Speech_CoalitionAnd then Congress passed:http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Child_Online_Protection_ActWhich was then presented to the Supreme Court in:http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ashcroft_v._American_Civil_Liberties_Un io n

So, it comes down to being pictures or videos of individuals under the age of 18 actually engaging in sex acts.

Also included in 'sex acts': nudity. There does not need to be any literal sex acts.

grumpyguru:All I got out of it was google's holding a db of child porn images and is willing to share it with anyone who pretends to care about child safety... =/

No, they are not. No one is that stupid, as I'm sure you're well aware simple possession is a crime.

What they're doing is creating a database of file hashes that identify images known to be illegal. This makes it easier to find duplicates of those images without actually LOOKING at pictures all day and also gives them a starting point for a much larger and comprehensive database in the future.

That said, I'm no fan of censorship in any form - especially automated. I'm even less of a fan of the kiddy porn though, so this is a tough call. I'm tempted to simply say two wrongs can sometimes make a right, but beware the expense..

Like others I'm of two minds. No one wants to support child pornography (well, almost no one) but at the same time I don't want Google deciding what can and cannot be accessed online.

And in the end it probably wont work. Someone somewhere will figure out a work-around and the web will continue to be flooded with porn, a very slim margin of which will be child porn. My advice if you're going to trade child porn is: Don't get caught.

Virtual Pariah:Burr: Virtual Pariah: Voiceofreason01: On the one hand child abuse is a terrible thing but on the other censorship in any form is a very dangerous thing. I'm not sure how I feel about this.

How could Google hope to control what people in eastern European countries host on their sites? I get how they could limit access through google.com, but you'd have to sever the hard lines to an entire country, which would practically require a modern siege.

qorkfiend:Springy23: Like others I'm of two minds. No one wants to support child pornography (well, almost no one) but at the same time I don't want Google deciding what can and cannot be accessed online.

It's not Google deciding what can or cannot be accessed online; it's Google deciding what they will present in their search results.

Okay but they're Google. They're perhaps the largest digital entity in the world, which is especially prescient given all the NSA stuff that's been coming out. I suppose we could all go to Bing for our child porn requirements, but Google holds enough of a stranglehold on the market that they basically get to say what goes online. Or at least what you can readily find.

Which, again, is agreeable when it comes to Child Porn. How long until something like this gets extended to piracy? What about leaked information, like the Wikileaks files? How long until Google starts determining what you can and cannot use their servers to access? I suppose another search engine would just pick up where Google falls off (how you doin' go duck go?), though that doesn't reassure me any that the world's largest tech giant can essentially determine what we can find using their product. What's worse is that they also support transparency and free, open access to all web content.

Not saying this is a slippery slope, just saying we should be aware of what this movement might signal.

BafflerMeal:meanmutton: Kyosuke: I have yet to see in any conversation on this subject who exactly gets to define "child porn."

Oh, that one is easy: The US Supreme Court. As most of the Internet is run through the United States, US law is what trumps everything. The US Congress passed a few laws regarding what is and isn't child porn; the US Supreme Court gutted them, and we're left with a very basic definition: It's pictures or videos of actual people under the age of 18 engaged in sex acts.

Some details:Congress passed:http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Child_Pornography_Prevention_Act_of_199 6Which was then presented to the Supreme Court in:http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ashcroft_v._Free_Speech_CoalitionAnd then Congress passed:http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Child_Online_Protection_ActWhich was then presented to the Supreme Court in:http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ashcroft_v._American_Civil_Liberties_Un io n

So, it comes down to being pictures or videos of individuals under the age of 18 actually engaging in sex acts.

Also included in 'sex acts': nudity. There does not need to be any literal sex acts.

Kyosuke:BafflerMeal: meanmutton: Kyosuke: I have yet to see in any conversation on this subject who exactly gets to define "child porn."

Oh, that one is easy: The US Supreme Court. As most of the Internet is run through the United States, US law is what trumps everything. The US Congress passed a few laws regarding what is and isn't child porn; the US Supreme Court gutted them, and we're left with a very basic definition: It's pictures or videos of actual people under the age of 18 engaged in sex acts.

Some details:Congress passed:http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Child_Pornography_Prevention_Act_of_199 6Which was then presented to the Supreme Court in:http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ashcroft_v._Free_Speech_CoalitionAnd then Congress passed:http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Child_Online_Protection_ActWhich was then presented to the Supreme Court in:http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ashcroft_v._American_Civil_Liberties_Un io n

So, it comes down to being pictures or videos of individuals under the age of 18 actually engaging in sex acts.

Also included in 'sex acts': nudity. There does not need to be any literal sex acts.

Anonymous Bosch:Even though it has nothing to do with the content of the article: has anyone noticed that even with SafeSearch off, Google is completely useless for porn anymore? I'm talking the regular kind that the completely pointless and misleading title that Subby gave this article refers to. Do the same search on Yahoo and you're like, "hey! There's the results Google used to give me!"

Wikipedia:

On 12 December 2012 Google removed the option to turn off the filter entirely, forcing users to enter more specific search queries to get adult content.

Tommy Moo:How could Google hope to control what people in eastern European countries host on their sites? I get how they could limit access through google.com, but you'd have to sever the hard lines to an entire country, which would practically require a modern siege.

Does nobody read the article or previous comments anymore? Here, I'll repost what I said earlier:

show me: Voiceofreason01: R.A.Danny: We tend to bristle at the government censoring things. That isn't what is happening here.

It's not better when Google censors things. I'm fine with child porn being removed from the internet. What bothers me is that the technology that Google is creating and refining could easily be used to spy on anybody or censor anything.

Well, I read the article (unlike a lot of people it seems) and they are not arbitrarily finding child porn and nuking it. FTA:

Recently, Google has begun using "fingerprinting" of child sex-abuse images, Fuller said. It will help law enforcement, Web companies and advocates find and remove the images, as well as prosecute the people who posted them, Google says.

Kyosuke:BafflerMeal: meanmutton: Kyosuke: I have yet to see in any conversation on this subject who exactly gets to define "child porn."

Oh, that one is easy: The US Supreme Court. As most of the Internet is run through the United States, US law is what trumps everything. The US Congress passed a few laws regarding what is and isn't child porn; the US Supreme Court gutted them, and we're left with a very basic definition: It's pictures or videos of actual people under the age of 18 engaged in sex acts.

Some details:Congress passed:http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Child_Pornography_Prevention_Act_of_199 6Which was then presented to the Supreme Court in:http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ashcroft_v._Free_Speech_CoalitionAnd then Congress passed:http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Child_Online_Protection_ActWhich was then presented to the Supreme Court in:http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ashcroft_v._American_Civil_Liberties_Un io n

So, it comes down to being pictures or videos of individuals under the age of 18 actually engaging in sex acts.

Also included in 'sex acts': nudity. There does not need to be any literal sex acts.